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When a person undergoes a traumatic experience, it can sometimes be minimized, depending on how and when the experience took place, how old the person is, or even their natural wiring and personality. However, there are some ways to identify if your struggles might be rooted in trauma. One way is to look at your everyday life in three categories: physical, emotional, and mental. We’ll look more in-depth at how your responses in body and routine, feelings and emotional reactions, and thoughts and patterns may be clues to how you’re really doing. Physical Clues of a Traumatic Experience Physical clues can include anything from practical, everyday life and habits to your physical body. First, let’s explore your everyday habits and routines. If you’re struggling with any of the basics of human existence (food, sleep, moving your body, feeling less than yourself), these alone won’t necessarily tell you that your body is responding to a traumatic experience. But it’s worth noting which of these are out of whack with what you’d describe as your normal experience. For example, if you’ve found that sleep isn’t something you typically struggle with, yet it’s been a weekly or every-other-day struggle since you went through something scary, hard, or unexpected that caused you trauma, add it to your physical record. You can do this by jotting things down on a Post-it note, keeping a journal of your physical health, or just making a note in your phone. It’s a good idea to record the sleepless patterns, however, so that you can give more details to your doctor if you decide to investigate further. Another physical cue that may go unchecked is your appetite. It’s easy to overlook a weight change when we’re stressed or too busy to take notice. However, pay attention to your [...]

There comes a time in all of our lives when we must face the worst experience we could imagine. It might be anything from the death of a loved one to a chronic illness diagnosis, sudden poverty, or a relationship that turns toxic. Sometimes these things happen when we are too young to understand them, but they affect our lives for decades, nevertheless. Sometimes it feels like no matter what we do, we can’t get past a certain experience. It’s as if our lives took a screenshot of the traumatic moment, and now that picture is forever framed as a reminder of what we went through. Every time we look at it, we feel uncomfortable, but we don’t know what to do with those feelings. What does it mean to be stuck in trauma, and how can we get unstuck? The Great Escape from Trauma For many people, the most natural way of dealing with trauma is to intellectualize it. Whenever they encounter trauma, in whatever form it takes, they naturally respond by trying to think through it. They might become silent, withdrawn, and stoic, endlessly replaying events in their mind while trying to figure out how it could have gone differently. Alternatively, they might find a person with whom they talk about the life-altering events, only to go round in circles without ever finding a way past the trauma. Their attempts to cope with or process trauma are ineffective because we can’t think our way out of trauma. We must feel our way out of it, as uncomfortable as it is. The reason we find comfort in intellectualizing trauma and our feelings is that it distances us from the events. For example, a man who is navigating a messy divorce might talk to his therapist about the details [...]

Coping with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) is a process of ups and downs, steps forward to a healthier mind, and steps backward to unhealthy habits. We are often obstacles to ourselves, but that doesn’t have to be the case. We can help ourselves by repeating affirmations and exercises that counter our trauma as often as we need to. Some Affirmations for People Who Are Coping with PTSD I am not my trauma You can live with certain memories for so long that they start to feel like old friends. Even traumatic experiences become familiar because you spend so much time reminiscing, regretting, and reliving them in your head. This is the core of PTSD; it is ghosts of a hurtful, violent, or damaging past haunting our present. They bring back all of the emotions and memories attached to those events. The truth is that, however real and fresh the trauma feels, it is in the past. It is no longer a part of you. You might be forever changed by those events, but you are moving forward, and every day there is distance between you and them. You still have a future. My abilities extend beyond past trauma Abuse can take away our peace of mind, our innocence, and our trust in people. Whatever damaging experience you went through, though, you are still here and enduring. You can heal, forgive, and learn to trust again. As grief counseling teaches, when a tree is cut down, we must mourn its loss. However, we can also create a beautiful garden around its stump and keep it as a memory of what it once was. Trauma might have taken many things from you, but there is still much more for you to discover and enjoy. Memories need not cause so much pain [...]